To get out there and stomp the crap outta those mooching widows and orphans.
For freedom!
No kidding. He dresses it up in mumbly Centrist threads, but that is exactly what David Fucking Brooks is calling for: a cleansing little war-of-all-against-all, below-stairs, down among the servants.
And why must the proles fight for crumbs? Um. Uh. Well...
The Freedom Alliance
"For every program concerned about budget cuts, the strategy should be less about proving merit and more about partnering with like-minded groups for offense."
...
"The foreign aid people, the scientific research people, the education people, the antipoverty people and many others have to form a humane alliance. They have to go on offense. They have to embrace plans to slow the growth of Medicare, to reform Social Security and to reform the tax code to foster growth and produce more revenue."
Over the next few weeks, Republicans will try to cut discretionary spending to 2008 levels and tell their constituents they are boldly reducing the size of government. That is a mirage. Anybody who doesn’t take on entitlement spending is an enabler of big government. The supposedly rabid Republican freshmen are actually big government conservatives. They will cut programs that do measurable good while doing little to solve our long-range fiscal crisis.
The word Mr. Brooks is looking for here is "lying". Republicans are "liars" who are "lying" about the issue which their incoherently ranted out campaign slogans indicates they all believe is only slightly less important than celebrating the Imaginary Legacy of St. Ronald Reagan and trolling for skanks on CraigsList.
So instead of fudging and hedging and in every way imaginable cheating on this one, very-obvious matter, why won't Mr. Brooks ever finally once-and-for-God-damn-all just come out use the correct word like I'm sure his boss at Chicago's late, lamented City News Bureau drummed into him at least 100 times?
Three reasons:
1. Mr. Brooks would lose access: Mr. Brooks' stock-in-trade is alleging that he has gone where others cannot go and heard what others do not hear...which somehow always manages to sound exactly like everyone else's Beltway Common Wisdom. However, if he starts telling any portion of the political truth and calling his fellow Republicans out by their correct and proper name, he loses access.
2. Mr. Brooks would lose his job: Mr. Brooks' livelihood depends on hanging onto his specific, hyphenate-Conservative niche at all costs ( hyphenate-Conservatives are those outlying front men [and women] the Right fobs off on the press whenever they need to pretend they are not just a gang of angry, paranoid, white men, anti-science Fundies and billionaires.) As Andrew Sullivan made his bones as gay-Conservative, and Michael Steele makes bank on being a black-Conservative...Mr. Brooks is the "reasonable"-Conservative. Reasonable being defined as, "No matter how horribly the Right fucks everything up, and no matter how blatant the evidence, I will ALWAYS find some way to blame half of the problem on Democrats and the Left."
Like so:"Meanwhile, the Obama administration theoretically opposes runaway debt while it operationally expands it. The president is unwilling to ask for shared sacrifice if the Republicans won’t ask with him. Fine. But he hasn’t even used his pulpit to prepare the ground. He announces unserious cuts with lavish fanfare."
Translation: Because Barack Obama refuses to allow his Administration to once again be Obamacare-death-panel-immolated for the amusement and political advancement of the Palinite orcs who run Mr. Brook's Party, Obama is unserious and falling down on the job.
3. Mr. Brooks is a Republican. Therefore while theoretically "Reasonable", he is operationally a liar.
And so, once again, Mr. Brooks is forced -- forced, I tells ya! -- to conclude that the only remaining alternative for environmentalists, educators, government research scientists and all other socially responsible types is to slug it out for table scraps with the weak, the elderly, the sick, the powerless...
...in the plutocrat Thunderdome Mr. Brooks' depraved ideology has prepared for them.
10 comments:
Mr. Brooks in fact outed himself as a conservative at a speech given at the Commonwealth Club of California recently. Unfortunately, the speech is too recent to have been archived yet.
He was ponderously "humorous" about it, but the humor was OK P. J. O'Rourke rather than actually funny, if you get the distinction.
Brilliant!
I'm linking you within my commentary. Hope it's okay.
And I guess D. means that he was drunk?
S
What struck me first about the excerpt you posted is that while pretending to be 'sympathetic' and on-the-side of government employees, he, being the corporate shill he is, is encouraging them to bail out on their unionized jobs and enter a privatized world where they can fight for chicken feed while the big govt money goes solely into their employer's pockets.
And to D:
I first became aware of Mr. Brooks on the PBS News Hour (which had a different name back then) - where he has always 'stood' for the Conservative point of view.
DFB nowhere in his "piece" mentions military spending. Curious.
Brooks is like the "Joker" in one of the Batman movies (I saw only the end on TV) who urges Ferry Boat passengers to blow-up one another after HE places explosives in the boats. "One group must destroy the Other or I'LL destroy BOTH!! BWAHAHAHAHA!!!@!111!!#"
Better if Educators and Scientists, Welfare & SS recipients, and Government Workers Whose Pensions are being stolen from them while Govenors (also Gov't employees) threaten them with ARMY: also government employes with Pension Plans waiting to be Looted. (But will the National Guard cooperate with some Right Wing Drooling Slob?), eh?) ... maybe they'll all just ... get together.
Just Like The Egyptians Did.
American Gatherings won't be televised all over the World, but Americans staying home might get a lot of attention. Specially if some of the Americans were Fox technicians and cameramen and caterers and makeup people.
Slightly OT: The new Atlas Shrugged movie (Part 1 of 3!) has finally come out.
Wouldn't David Brooks make an excellent Wesley Mouch?
What David Brooks was saying is that he is in favor of anything the government does that benefits him (FDA, highways, etc.), but the things he doesn't need -- social security and medicare ("entitlements") -- he objects to.
One quick question. He'll lose access? He's an opinion writer, f'crissakes... what the fuck does he need access for? If he wants to make a point, and can't find a fact or a source to back it up, he can just invent one. Michelle Malkin does it all the time.
Caption, Bartender Speaking: "Your usual, Mr. Brooks...Hubris on the rocks?"
Gotta love mr.Brooks =)
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